Religion – your views

[Johnny]

Uh I'm pretty much an atheist. =/ but I don't have anything against jews either barring their dumb diet laws and all that lark.

http://www.sciencemadesimple.com/scienc ... ition.html

[Cairnie]

Please tell me you're a troll

[Johnny]

Please tell me you're a troll

Nope. I just don't try and manipulate science into justifying my own beliefs. Some religions, however, do, and I think atheism most of all- certainly much more than Buddhism and Christianity. Not that I have anything against atheists, but when certain individuals who practice atheism try and use science to justify their beliefs I personally find it sickening. After all, as I said, that is what the Nazis, or social darwinists, did to try and justify their killing of Jews.

[spiraldoor]

^ I think this might be the guy who said he wanted the Off Topic forum to be deleted.

[Xenon]

It's all very well to argue for and against atheism/religious belief, but how can you label atheism as being more dangerous than religion? Religion is accountable for some of the world's most catastrophic events. Some might argue that religion is the world's deadliest weapon.

[Tobbe]

You're a Creationist? LoL

[DesLife]

Atheism is not a religion.

It bears all the characteristics of a religion.

I'm not even going to read what you've written.

Well, I did it anyway, and all you've written is utterly stupid.

[PowerPatrick]

Atheism is not a religion.

It bears all the characteristics of a religion.

By that logic, not playing football is a sport.

[Adsolution]

Atheism is not a religion.

It bears all the characteristics of a religion.

By that logic, not playing football is a sport.

Atheism is a religion in which you strongly believe in science, but Patrick, highly opposed to other religions, is feels put down at the thought he might share the same name as his "opposers".

Although if they have the will to call themselves Atheists, they tend to look down on supernatural belief more than Christian's would about non-believers.

I wasn't arguing there, I was just saying that Atheists, if they call themselves that, a lot of the time are smug about it.

But Johnny, if you're so against Atheism for hard-core science beliefs, then how come you're so hard-core opposed to science that you don't even bother to pay attention to history? Why does he know so much about it? Because if you went through school, you'd have learnt it. This means either you're a nine-year-old troll, or you failed school really bad and decided to commit truancy, or you're a dumbass that passed Socials 8 by cheating.

As for myself, I wouldn't classify myself into any religion, I kind of get my ideas from all of them (except Scientology, which is complete bullshit, it's way to obvious). I follow religions for the moralities, which in my opinion has left me with a very, very open mind. Just because good and true moralities come from a religion and someone doesn't believe in religion, doesn't make moralities stupid. I also believe in some sort of life after death, because according to the third law of thermodynamics, energy, aka your conscience, cannot vanish. I also believe in sort f "souls" because of factual witness events that have occurred:

A woman was dying on an operating table, and she couldn't see what they were doing because they had a sheet over her body. But then her heart stopped for a minute, and she saw herself floating above her body, and could see under the blanket what was going on, and she was right, and then she came back to life.

But of course, as you can tell, I'm big on Science too. I love quantum physics with dimensions, as well as astronomy. That stuff is damn interesting (and I find it easy to understand).

[PowerPatrick]

Atheism is a religion in which you strongly believe in science, but Patrick, highly opposed to other religions, is feels put down at the thought he might share the same name as his "opposers".

Atheists do believe in many things, but pixies and magic are just not one of them. And science is still not a religion, because they're two different fundamentals. Science does not use faith, but uses theories based on evidence, which is constantly progressed trough documentation, data, analysis and practices to prove it. Point me where your pixie is, and try to scientifically describe it, without using theological arguments.

Although if they have the will to call themselves Atheists, they tend to look down on supernatural belief more than Christian's would about non-believers.

That's called an "antitheist", like myself, and there's many of them, even when they refer themselves as "atheists".

I just saw your own edit, but I will continue to debate a bit later. Need to go to school now.

[Holy Crap]

Atheism is a religion in which you strongly believe in science

No.

[Adsolution]

OH LOOK PATTY, THE PIXIES ARE IN THE CLOUDS. WHAT DID YOU THINK I WOULD SAY??!!!11!1

I believe in logical explanations, but this is where science falls short. Does everything have a scientific explanation?

Also notice how I didn't say anything about physical pixies or magical doodads, I was talking about your self-being. Where did creativity come from? Also I don't know if you'd follow me here, but many people think our brains are a bunch of chemical reactions that create complex moving things. Lets say you constructed an awesome intelligent robot. It's a robot, but it's not like you created consciousness and being and a living thing with your bare hands. The robot may be technically smart, but it wouldn't be qualified as living. If you hurt it, it might have an intelligent response, but there are things humans can do that we can't explain, and are impossible to program into intelligence, aka pure science.

Living beings can sense things. They can see. It's like saying a digital camera can see, but it's not like it's living. We can see, but we're living and we can comprehend what we see and there's something inside of each of us that separates us into individuals that live on their own, and exist. We can predict things, and we can almost very slightly telepathically sense other's emotions even if they don't show it physically. Therefore, that something inside of us can't have a scientific explanation, although maybe it's some physical or, perhaps, non-physical science in a different dimension that crosses over into ours to create something. Tenth Dimension? Vibrating strings of everything? Maybe it has something to do with that, but even still, it's something ultimately powerful that separates living from non-living. There's no in-between.

Zombies are a perfect example of what seems to be a programmed brain with no "soul" as I am now calling it. They do everything straight-forward, and words, the bringer of emotion, unless hard-programmed into itself to recognize things, which humans aren't, Zombies don't know how to do anything, they completely run off instinct, which are the basic programmings of the brain to begin with.

You see, if you want to build intelligence, you'll have to start it off with a kick somewhere, it needs to have a solid ground to learn from. However, humans know absolutely nothing when they're born. They learn completely from scratch. Language is learned from nothing. A grasp of concepts is learned from... nothing. There must be some sort of inter-connected soul guidance coming from somewhere that lives inside you.

Now Patrick, what you've done above is rude and ignorant. If you've ever studied any religion in detail, you'd know at least a smidgen of what it's about. Never in the bible has it ever mentioned anything about anything "scientifically impossible" except for God, nor has it said to take it literally.

The problem I have with people who think like you do, is that you think that anything that doesn't sound like it could have an explanation that we can't comprehend, can't be. You're so completely focused on revolving around facts and explanations that you're failing to realize that maybe not everything IS science. I don't see any reason why there's no room for things that aren't science, (now don't compare what I'm saying now to what I said a few paragraphs ago, because I'm speaking for everyone) because science is the technicalities, and spirituality is the non-technicalities. Notice how when people solve math problems, there's only an answer, right or wrong. But when someone does something such as write music, there's no right or wrong answer, there's no technical answer.

Now thing of that as the Universe. Where the HELL did everything come from. Is there a scientific answer for that? There was the big bang theory, but what created the big bang? And what created the thing that created the big bang and so on? Which was first, the chicken or the egg? Does anyone have a scientific explanation on the beginning of the timeline of everything? Or has everything always been?

Ponder please, and for you Patrick, don't tl;dr.

Atheism is a religion in which you strongly believe in science

No.

You've got to be kidding me.

[Matyuv]

^ I think this might be the guy who said he wanted the Off Topic forum to be deleted.

He might be, as that guy was actually Mister Dark, the creationist troll who made the infamous "typical atheist" post.

[Tobbe]

Ok, first of all: RayFan, stop insulting Johnny and Patrick. It contributes nothing to the discussion, and it makes you look like an arrogant asshole, making it much harder for you to get your points across.[/mod mode]

All right, now let's have some fun!

First, here is Wikipedia's definition of Atheism:

Atheism, in a broad sense, is the rejection of belief in the existence of deities.[1] In a narrower sense, atheism is specifically the position that there are no deities.[2] Most inclusively, atheism is simply the absence of belief that any deities exist.[3] Atheism is contrasted with theism,[4] which in its most general form is the belief that at least one deity exists.

Atheism is not a religion.

It bears all the characteristics of a religion.

Oh, really? So what are the characteristics of religion? Once again using Wikipedia I found this:

Religion is the belief in and worship of a god or gods

No, the very definition of Atheism is the rejection of any gods.

, or a set of beliefs concerning the origin and purpose of the universe.[1]

No, Atheism in itself makes no comment on the origin of the Universe. However, most Atheists are rational people, who accept the scientific explanation for the current state of the Universe (not the origin of it!), the Big Bang Theory. But this is not a fundamental belief to neither science nor Atheism. Should we discover evidence that contradicts the Big Bang Theory, we would change our minds and develop new theories. That's how science works. Furthermore, neither science nor Atheism makes any comments on the "purpose" of the Universe.

It is commonly regarded as consisting of a person’s relation to God or to gods or spirits.

Like I said, the only thing being an Atheist means is that you don't believe that any gods exist. Therefore, you cannot have any relations with them.

[2]Many religions have narratives, symbols, traditions and sacred histories associated with their deity or deities, that are intended to give meaning to life. They tend to derive morality, ethics, religious laws or a preferred lifestyle from their ideas about the cosmos and human nature.

Atheism has none of these things (some Atheists use a capital 'A' as their symbol, but this is not an official symbol all Atheists in the world can relate to).

So does Atheism have 'all the characteristics of a religion'? Bollocks! It has none of them. Can we please just agree on this, or do you insist on embarassing yourself some more?

Uhm, what? The Germans were Christians, and Hitler himself was an Austrian Catholic. And where did you get the idea that the Nazis wanted to exterminate the Jews in "the name of Evolution"? The reasons for the pursuit of the Jews were largely the poor social and economic circumstances in Interwar Germany, which combined with the Nationalist mindset that dominated Europe back in those days, was a fertile breeding ground for extreme political ideologies, such as Naziism. Hitler's race ideology was largely his own creation, and there's no credible evidence that can link it to Darwinian Evolution, which he publicly denounced. To say that Evolution is responsible for the Holocaust is a pretty bold claim, and it's almost certainly plain wrong.

Funny how an atheist would know so much about nazi philosophies. Hmm...

Godwin's law strikes again! This is just getting ridicolous. However, by insinuating that I'm a Nazi you have completely failed to adress my point. I will therefore declare victory here unless you actually have some intelligent response to it. As for why I know so much about Nazi philosophies. Prepare to be shocked: I actually paid attention during high school history!

And what's this hogwash about Evolution being an atheistic philosophy. It's not a philosophy, but a scientific theory built around hard, imperical evidence.

Hahaha! Evolution! Scientific! I like that.

I'm very interested to know why you find this funny. Darwin's theory of evolution is the foundation of modern biology, and it is built on mountains upon mountains of evidence. Ever heard of the fossil record? Or phylogenetics? Or DNA markers? If you have some shocking information which can disprove evolution, I suggest you stop lolling around on Rayman forums and take it to the academic arena and win a Nobel Prize.

It's just as much a philosophy as quantum mechanics. And while you may be technically correct that Evolution is atheistic, so is every scientific theory!

If science has anything to do with atheism then why does science keep disproving it?

Simply stating something doesn't make it true, although evidently this is a common practice in religion (just ask the Pope). So would you please describe to me exactly how science has disproved Atheism (btw, the only way to do this is to prove the existance of a god)? If you can't do this, you can expect nothing more from me than ridicule for making such a bold claim without any evidence to back you up. So go ahead, show me what you got!

Evolution, along with the Theory of Gravity and Germ Theory, describe how phenomena occur by natural processes, with no magic required.

Sorry, I believe in fact not myth. Thanks. You're not one of those "atheism is scientific" types are you? Combining science with atheism is just ridiculous.

Wtf does this even mean? You believe in fact, not myth? What has that got to do with anything I said? Please elaborate. And what do you mean by "Atheism is scientific"? I believe Atheism should be the deafault position for everyone (I won't believe in any gods until I see evidence that they exist), and since science hasn't in any way proven gods existance, you could well say that Atheism is scientific. That said, the two of them aren't fundamentally connected.

Tell me, if atheism is such a moral religion why is it historically so closely linked to nazism? why is it that, if atheism is such a great religion, as you say, it's responsible for the impingement of scientific progress? and how, how, how has it possible survived to this day despite all morality and science contradicting it?

Now you're just repeating youself. Like I said, Atheism is not a religion, and it is not historically closely linked to Naziism. This is something a lot of religious people believe, when there's actually no credible historical evidence to support it. And this claim that Atheism is responsible for the impingement of scientific progress is taken out of thin air. Once again you simply make claims without giving any evidence for their validity. This is a fantastic way to lose a discussion. Tell me exactly how Atheism impinges scientific progress. Pretty please? This statement is also ironic considering that organised religion throughout history has been an excellent retardant for science, and it still is in the Islamic world. The Catholic church wasn't exactly open to new ideas during the Dark Ages, was it? For instance, both Galileo and Copernicus were labeled heretics for advocating Heliocentrism.

That was fun! But wait, there's more!:

Although if they have the will to call themselves Atheists, they tend to look down on supernatural belief more than Christian's would about non-believers.

I wasn't arguing there, I was just saying that Atheists, if they call themselves that, a lot of the time are smug about it.

Do you have any evidence to support this claim?

As for myself, I wouldn't classify myself into any religion, I kind of get my ideas from all of them (except Scientology, which is complete bullshit, it's way to obvious). I follow religions for the moralities, which in my opinion has left me with a very, very open mind. Just because good and true moralities come from a religion and someone doesn't believe in religion, doesn't make moralities stupid.

Ah, this is a very common claim: That you can't have morality without religion. This is obviously complete bullshit, since morality is very easily predicted by natural selection. We all have some kind of general moral compass built into us from birth, and we get more specific morals from our upbringing (once again, this is the work of evolution). I advice you to read The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins, where the evolution of morality is explained in an easily understandable way.

I also believe in some sort of life after death, because according to the third law of thermodynamics, energy, aka your conscience, cannot vanish.

This is the third law of thermodynamics: 'As a system approaches absolute zero, all processes cease and the entropy of the system approaches a minimum value.'
Now how do you go from that to the conclusion 'There is life after death'? I sense the use of some very funky mathematics here! And where did you get the idea that your conscience is made out of energy. Your conscience is the product of a large number of complex chemical and electric reactions in your brain, but once your brain dies, electric activity ceases, and the chemicals in the brain start to decay. Thus your conscience is lost. The energy once required to drive your brain chemistry is transformed to another state, like heat or light. None of the laws of thermodynamics suggest that your conscience is preserved when you die.

A woman was dying on an operating table, and she couldn't see what they were doing because they had a sheet over her body. But then her heart stopped for a minute, and she saw herself floating above her body, and could see under the blanket what was going on, and she was right, and then she came back to life.

You do know that you can still be alive during cardiac arrest, right? That's why they have those fancy electric defibrilators in hospitals. You're only really dead once your brain dies, at which point it is definitely game over. Out-of-body experiences are nothing new, and they're much more likely to be the product of a "playful" brain than something supernatural. My father used to them while he was sleeping, ffs! There are also stories of dying people who see a bright light and stuff like that. These are much more likely to be the results of chemistry going on in a dying brain than evidence for the existance of heaven. I'm skeptical of anecdotal evidence like this, like any rational person should be.

I believe in logical explanations, but this is where science falls short. Does everything have a scientific explanation?

Not everything has been explained scientifically yet, but this does not justify making the claim that there are things that can't be explained scientifically. Until 1849, there was no scientific explanation for the origin of all the different species of animals, and until the 1920s, there was no good scientific explanation for the current state of the Universe. Saying that there are things science can't explain simply because there are things we do not yet know is a fallacy.

Also notice how I didn't say anything about physical pixies or magical doodads, I was talking about your self-being. Where did creativity come from? Also I don't know if you'd follow me here, but many people think our brains are a bunch of chemical reactions that create complex moving things. Lets say you constructed an awesome intelligent robot. It's a robot, but it's not like you created consciousness and being and a living thing with your bare hands. The robot may be technically smart, but it wouldn't be qualified as living. If you hurt it, it might have an intelligent response, but there are things humans can do that we can't explain, and are impossible to program into intelligence, aka pure science.

Why do you think it's impossible to create consciousness? Evidently, a machine of sufficiant complexity should be able to achieve self-awereness. The human brain is to date the only processor which can achieve this, but there's no reason why we shouldn't be able to build a computer with self-awareness when our technology is sufficiently advanced. I'm interested to know two things: Why do you think our brains are more than just chemical reactions? Do you have a good reason to think otherwise? And why do you think it's impossible to built a computer with consciousness? Why should this be impossible?

Living beings can sense things. They can see. It's like saying a digital camera can see, but it's not like it's living. We can see, but we're living and we can comprehend what we see and there's something inside of each of us that separates us into individuals that live on their own, and exist. We can predict things, and we can almost very slightly telepathically sense other's emotions even if they don't show it physically. Therefore, that something inside of us can't have a scientific explanation, although maybe it's some physical or, perhaps, non-physical science in a different dimension that crosses over into ours to create something. Tenth Dimension? Vibrating strings of everything? Maybe it has something to do with that, but even still, it's something ultimately powerful that separates living from non-living. There's no in-between.

Now you've just collapsed into the realms of poetic speculation. Do you have any evidence to support these spectacular claims that there's something ultimately powerful that separates living from non-living? And what's this nonsense about humans having telepathic powers? While it is correct that humans are very talented at interpreting each others facial expressions and body language (this has evolved in humans because it is a very useful trait when living in a social structure like archaic homo sapiens did), there is nothing telepathic about this. And once again you simply assert that there's something inside us that can't be explained scientifically. Why?! You must have some reason, or?

You see, if you want to build intelligence, you'll have to start it off with a kick somewhere, it needs to have a solid ground to learn from. However, humans know absolutely nothing when they're born. They learn completely from scratch. Language is learned from nothing. A grasp of concepts is learned from... nothing. There must be some sort of inter-connected soul guidance coming from somewhere that lives inside you.

No, there mustn't be. At the point of birth, the human brain is already very well developed and set up to learn. There's nothing magic about the way a child learns language at all. It picks up words from people around it (usually the parents), and connects them to meanings and actions. It doesn't take long until the brain has stored up enough words to be able to build meaningful sentences on its own. And the more you understand, the easier it becomes to learn, so you learn your mother tongue exponentially, shall we say. No magic required, just the amazing power of the human brain.

That's enough for today. Nice to see some action in this thread again, it's been a while. It's always nice to waste two hours of your life answering religious people who think they're better than you. Tobbe out.

[Adsolution]

First off, I'm not going to argue at all, since that was some form of enlightenment there.

Secondly, I didn't insult anyone. I was merely pointing out the fact that Patrick seems to like to make others feel like losers because they believe in something. But Johnny's an obvious troll is obvious troll though. Not much more to say about that.

[spiraldoor]

I also believe in some sort of life after death, because according to the third law of thermodynamics, energy, aka your conscience, cannot vanish.

This is the third law of thermodynamics: 'As a system approaches absolute zero, all processes cease and the entropy of the system approaches a minimum value.'
Now how do you go from that to the conclusion 'There is life after death'? I sense the use of some very funky mathematics here! And where did you get the idea that your conscience is made out of energy. Your conscience is the product of a large number of complex chemical and electric reactions in your brain, but once your brain dies, electric activity ceases, and the chemicals in the brain start to decay. Thus your conscience is lost. The energy once required to drive your brain chemistry is transformed to another state, like heat or light. None of the laws of thermodynamics suggest that your conscience is preserved when you die.

He must be getting the first and third laws mixed up. Assuming that consciousness is indeed made out of energy (electricity I suppose?), the question of whether or not it survives death is still not answered. The same logic can be used to conclude that flames can never go out, because none of their energy is destroyed.

[El Dango]

Surprised me that RayFan is that religious.

[Adsolution]

Surprised me that RayFan is that religious.

Well I'm not really that religious. I believe in all sciences, and that you don't just vanish when you die. But really it's a mystery. It's just one of those things we have to wait til we die to find out.

[spiraldoor]

Well I'm not really that religious. I believe in all sciences, and that you don't just vanish when you die.

What makes you so certain that you don’t just vanish? Considering all the available evidence it’s the only possibility that makes real sense. Wishful thinking?

But really it's a mystery. It's just one of those things we have to wait til we die to find out.

No, we have to wait until science has progressed to the degree where it can answer these questions for us. Dying is very unlikely to answer anything, ever.

[Adsolution]

Noone can truly experience dying until they've died, so unless you're going to do like a being transplant to a ferret or something, have it die, then go back to your original body, you can't %100 prove anything.